


the kitchen dimension

by alpenglow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: A little angst, Alternate Timelines, BAMF Molly Weasley II, F/F, F/M, Fluff, character exploration, cute toads, not a love triangle!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpenglow/pseuds/alpenglow
Summary: Teddy's a private potioneer who spends most of his time in his Diagon Alley flat brewing draughts and entertaining his girlfriend, Victoire, when she's off her long shifts at St. Mungo's. Ed barely has time to crash at his flat between missions for the Auror office and weekends at his boyfriend James's. But they have the same predicament: someone -- something -- is haunting their kitchen. And it looks just like them.
Relationships: Teddy Lupin/James Sirius Potter, Teddy Lupin/Victoire Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic would not have gotten done without the invaluable feedback of my critique partners: an, m, and @motherofmercury

There was someone in Teddy’s kitchen. He’d just gotten home — he was still carrying a precarious load of potions ingredients in both arms — and when he kicked the door shut, he saw him. The ingredients hit the floor.

There was a big crash of glass and the terrified ribbit of a toad (Teddy needed _some_ company while Victoire was working long shifts— one could hardly blame him) making a futile leap in his plastic container. 

The figure didn’t turn at the noise. Teddy cast Reparo blindly at the floor, not taking his eyes off the figure in his kitchen. It almost looked like… but surely not— it was impossible.

But it _was_ — it was him. His own self, making pancakes on the stove. He wore pajamas that Teddy didn’t own, but everything else was markedly similar. Teddy stumbled forward, further into his kitchen where the ghost occupied himself with his cooking.

But it wasn’t a ghost, Teddy reasoned. It didn’t look like one. It was translucent in the traditional sense, yes, but not grayscale. All the ghosts Teddy had met were colorless beings, floating and see-through. This thing — whatever it was — shuffled on both its bare feet. And it had color, muted and thin, sure, but it was there. A watercolor apparition. 

* * *

There was someone in Ed’s kitchen. 

This was typical, he thought furiously. Never mind the 24-hour-shift he’d just come off of, never mind the paperwork still waiting for him after he ate, after he managed an hour or two of sleep. No— an Auror’s duties are never quite done, and they seem to include _intruders_ now. 

He’d heard of this kind of thing happening to the higher ups. The real high-profile Aurors like Harry who had fought in the war. But he was just Ed, mid-level Auror (if there was such a thing), and he really hadn’t done anything to deserve this. 

He heard the footsteps at once, and let out a tired sigh, abandoning the pancakes on the stove and turning to the figure. 

But it wasn’t an intruder— it was _him_ , his own self, and he was walking into the kitchen backwards, talking to someone in the distance. When he took another step into the kitchen, Ed heard the intruder’s voice-- also identical to Ed’s own— as he called down the hallway.

“Finish that letter for me, Vic, will you? Just write that I’ll get Orla her potions by Wednesday.”

She must have called back, because he yelled a “thank you” down the hall. 

Ed rushed forward, looking down the hall to his open office door, expecting to hear the scratching of quill on parchment or her gentle hum. But there was neither, and when he pushed the door open, it was exactly how he had left it the day before.

* * *

Teddy was not entirely convinced he hadn’t hallucinated what happened a week ago in his kitchen. When his mirror image vanished, taking whatever he had been cooking with him, a heavy silence coated his whole apartment. He could practically feel it on his skin, and no matter how long he showered or how furiously he rubbed at his freckled skin, it was there. A little weight he carried with him. And what was that, really? Just another to add to his collection.

He was relieved to hear it ruptured when someone knocked at his door. Well, not _someone_ — Victoire, with takeaway. He pulled open the door, and the knots in his shoulders melted at the sight of her. She couldn’t quite rub the silence off his skin. (At least not yet, though Teddy was certainly willing to give it an enthusiastic attempt later tonight.) But she was here, and she was Vic, and that was good enough for him. 

He kissed her before she even crossed the threshold into his flat. She pulled back with a giggle, eyes drowsy with fondness. “What was that for?”

He took the takeaway from her arms, levitating it lazily to his kitchen. (His _kitchen_!)

He resolved not to tell her. Just for now, just while he was figuring out what all of this meant. “You just look so beautiful.”

She lifted a pale brow. She’d clearly just come off a long rotation at St. Mungo’s, having changed out of her Healer’s robes at work and into sweatpants that, at one point, had belonged to Teddy. She still smelled faintly of antiseptic potion, but there was something underneath it — that lingering Victoire smell, like clean linens and the beach — that never failed to wake up something in him that lapsed into uneasy sleep whenever she was gone.

He pushed back a stray strand of cornsilk hair. “ _So_ beautiful.”

* * *

He was being haunted. There was no other explanation. And Ed had looked — _really_ looked — in all the files he knew he was not supposed to read back at the Auror office. In the past week, he’d read everything he could about hauntings. But the details were just a bit off. 

For one, Ed wasn’t dead. And this intruder, this whoever it was, looked exactly like him. They even walked the same, dragging their heels for a few steps before correcting into comfortable strides.

James smacked the table with such force that Ed’s water toppled over, and Ed along with it from the pure shock of it all. 

“Jay!” complained Ed from the floor. He threw himself back into the chair with a scowl.

It didn’t last long, melting off his face with unrelenting predictability when James grinned.

“Sorry. It was too easy. You’re always here—“ James tapped twice on the side of his head. “—and not here.” He made sweeping motions across the table. “What is it? Work?”

“Uh— sort of.” Ed frowned. 

He _was_ using work hours to investigate this project, but it was not one that his godfather had assigned to him. It was vaguely illegal in a way Ed simply didn't have the time to worry about now. He needed to _know_ — why him, why this flat, why his kitchen? And the ghost... why did it look just like him? He hadn't taken Divination at Hogwarts, but he didn't need to to know that it wasn't a good sign.

“Okay…” James scanned Ed’s face for something he did not find. “What is it, then?”

“Can ghosts time travel?” blurted Ed at once. At the delighted and incredulous look on James’s face, he elaborated. “I mean, theoretically. Is it, you know. Possible.”

James made a stellar attempt at keeping a straight face. “I mean, I’m not really the person to ask. Hogwarts dropouts and Quidditch stars don’t get a good supernatural education, I’m afraid.”

Ed leapt to the defensive. “You didn’t drop out of Hogwarts. You got your O.W.L.s.”

He rolled his eyes. “Either way— you know who you _should_ ask?”

“Don’t say your father,” groaned Ed.

“My father!” grinned James. “He might know. And if he doesn’t Aunt Hermione does, but they’re basically the same person at this point.”

“I think both Ginny and Ron might resent that accusation.”

“Well, maybe,” he allowed. 

“Harry will think I’ve finally lost my marbles if I ask him that,” insisted Ed. “He’s already worried about my sanity having to spend so much time with you.”

“Oi!”

He smiled. “I like it, though.”

James regarded him with suspicion. “Why _do_ you want to know if ghosts can time travel?” 

Ed hesitated. There was another possibility for all of this that he had not fully explored, mainly because he didn’t think it was true. But maybe he _had_ imagined it all, maybe he was actually losing a marble or two. But it was so real, every time he saw it. The ghostly apparition in his kitchen, living and laughing like it was his own.

If he was going a bit mental, he reasoned, who better to have at his side than Jay? With his Talk About Your Feelings Teatimes and reassurances like a currency Ed could never afford. 

He pursed his lips together for one last moment, and dropped all the tension from his face with a sigh. “Merlin, do I have a story for you.”

* * *

The apparition muttered to himself. “Ed Lupin, soon-to-be former Auror. Fired Auror. Reformed Auror?”

“Ed,” Teddy repeated to the toad in his hand. It gave a ribbit of approval. “You look like an Ed.”

It looked just as much like Toadie, the name Teddy had given it in the interim, but he liked Ed, too. It was fitting— he’d met them both on the same day. 

The figure, Ed, heaved a final sigh at his paperwork before opening the fridge. He briefly tried to bury himself in it — Teddy snorted — but resigned himself to grabbing a cold pumpkin juice. He grabbed his paperwork and left towards the hall, undoubtedly to his office. 

He disappeared, predictably, at the threshold of the kitchen. 

“Ed,” Teddy repeated again. There wasn’t much of a word to mull over, but he did his best, trying to imagine his world if he had been Ed instead of Teddy.

Though, he was an Ed. An Edward, specifically, though he didn’t feel like that name fit him very well. It had been his grandfather’s, but not even he had gone by that name. He had been Ted, Ted Tonks, and sometimes Teddy wondered why his own parents had even bothered with the Edward part at all. If they knew they were going to call him Teddy, why not Theodore?

In his distant memories of his grandmother, she had always called him Ed. _My sweet Ed_ , she would say, running a hand behind his ear and tucking it underneath his chin. He didn’t remember much else— she’d died before he could commit the finer details of her to memory, and now what he did have of her was fading. 

Harry and Ginny always called him Teddy. Teddy-boy, they’d say when he was young, throwing him clear into the air. It was silly and stupid, and Teddy had pretended to hate it when he was a teenager, but the truth was every holiday when Ginny lined him up with Harry, James, and Albus, his heart would clench a little when Ginny would say, “My boys.”

Harry had never raised him any differently than his own children, but there was weight in names, and Teddy carried around Lupin like a pebble in his pocket. And Potter — the lack of it — was a whole stone. 

But Ginny would smile over the camera before she took the picture. She said it mostly to herself, but Teddy listened for it every time. _Her boys._ And when the camera flashed, it was a bright reminder that even if he was not a Potter boy, he was Teddy-boy, and he had a space on the mantle just the same.

* * *

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” said Andromeda Tonks.

Ed gave a sheepish smile, one of the ones he knew reminded her of his mother. “I have just taken up an interest recently. It’s fascinating magic, Gran.”

“Years! _Years_ I have tried to get you to let me read your cards, read your leaves, anything! But no, Ed Lupin is _too good_ for Divination.”

“Not anymore,” he promised. “I’ve been humbled.”

“By who?”

“Fate,” he answered solemnly, because it wasn’t _really_ a lie.

She stood up in a huff, flicking on the kettle. “Edward bloody Lupin.”

“Your sweet Ed,” he corrected.

She looked at him over her shoulder, her scowl making way for begrudging tenderness. “My sweet Ed,” she agreed.

He followed her into the kitchen, half expecting the ghost-Ed to be there, too. But it was only them and Andromeda’s ancient cat, purring loudly as it rubbed against Ed’s shins.

He scooped it up in his arms. “Yes, hello to you too Hellion. You look very fetching today.”

The cat should have died a good ten years ago, but it hung around. Harry was deeply suspicious of it, convinced it was an Animagus in disguise, but Ed’s Gran’s theory seemed more likely: Hellion would milk all nine of his lives to linger to the end of hers. 

When the kettle whistled, Ed put Hellion back on the ground. Andromeda poured him a cup, smacking his hand away when he went for the sugar and milk. “I’ll do that.”

“I can make my own tea, Gran.”

“And I can make your tea for you, too. I did it your whole life. Shuffle those cards for me, dear.”

The Tarot deck on the table was well loved. Ed had known its images his whole life, and if he had the skill or the patience, he could probably draw them all from memory. Ed had never bothered much with his third eye — he was plenty entertained by what he saw with his regular two — so he didn’t feel the same magnetic attraction to its magic that Andromeda boasted. Not even when he shuffled; there were no hot or cold tingles, no sticky cards, no pulls in his gut that made him stop and think: _now this card— there’s something here_.

Ed was only entitled one magical quirk, and that was his Metamorphosing. Everything else he learned with grit and elbow grease, a harsh salve for his own education. Defense came easiest to him — Potions was an utter nightmare — but he had managed Os on both the N.E.W.T.s from sheer force of will. He made a decent Auror, hardworking but not innately magically powerful, and he thought that was probably for the best. 

“Shuffled up?” asked Andromeda, floating a chipped teacup to Teddy’s right. 

“Indeed.”

“May I ask what you’ve been so interested in?” She sipped her tea.

Ed was familiar with her tactics— she was so free of any scrutiny or intrigue on her expression that Ed always ended up spilling everything to her. He tried to toe the line this time. “I heard somewhere in the office that some people are predisposed to hauntings. That their auras attract lingering spirits.”

This he _had_ heard from work— in a file he was definitely not supposed to read. Most of its contents were redacted anyway. He hadn’t been able to piece together much, but it had stuck with him. 

“That’s true.” 

“So… How do you know if you’re one of them?”

She pursed her lips. “Ed, dear, you would have known by now if it was you. It would have started the moment your magic kicked in. You would see lingering souls everywhere, and most of the time, you would be the only one to see them.”

He leaned forward. “Can a ghost only show themselves to one person at a time?”

“They could. If the person had the right aura, and if the soul’s connection to the earth was withering. Ghosts can stay forever, but only if people are remembering them, see? That’s why the ghosts at Hogwarts have lingered so long— generations of students know them, remember them, share stories about them. If a ghost remains and there’s nobody there to see it, is it really there?”

“Right…” said Ed, doing his best to keep up. This wasn’t even Divination, this was definitely History of Magic, and well— that was the one class where he’d only managed an Exceeds Expectations.

“Ed, if you’re being haunted, that’s an easy fix. Salt and sage, dear, and if that doesn’t work, I know a great exorcist.”

“Salt and sage…” echoed Ed, feeling suddenly lighter. “That’s brilliant, Gran.”

“Drink your tea. I’ll be reading your leaves today, Edward Lupin. Come hell or high water.”

Her cat perked.

* * *

It occurred to Ed that it might not be the apparition that was haunting him, but that his kitchen itself was haunted. Because there was someone else here now, someone he also recognized very well, and the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace that made Ed wince a little.

It had been gross to begin with, but this was reaching new heights of ridiculousness. The other figure — a version of Victoire — was sitting on the counter now, legs locked around the apparition’s waist. 

If they could just stop snogging for one minute and talk! Eavesdropping was the only way Ed was going to find out about what was happening here, but they were going about this with an adolescent ferocity that made him wonder if they were managing to breathe.

If this haunting was a two-way thing and the other Ed — the apparition — could see into Ed’s kitchen, at least he had never seen something so… aggressive as this. He and James were perfectly respectable on that front, and they kept their fun contained to the bedroom. And the shower. And maybe, definitely the couch, but it wasn’t the _kitchen_.

Ed cocked his head sideways, frowning. Was that really what he looked like when he snogged? Poor James— it was not a sight to behold. 

If this haunting _was_ a two-way thing, the apparition should have the decency not to snog or — Merlin forbid — _shag_ anyone in their communal kitchen! 

At last they pulled back, and ghost-Victoire grinned. He couldn’t quite see the apparition’s face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to either; it would undoubtedly give Ed some terrible complex about his own sex face, and that would be a whole Talking About Your Feelings session with James that he could live without. 

“Bedroom?” she panted.

“Merlin, _yes_ ,” he groaned. 

When they scurried out of the room, their ghosts vanished out of view, leaving Ed alone in the thick air of his own kitchen. He felt a heavy pang of missing James, and another, softer, jab of missing Victoire. 

This iteration of his life didn’t feel so impossible when he thought about the full depth of his affection for Victoire. After all, they had fooled around before; a fumbling, giggling attempt in their Hogwarts years. But that was just for something to do, and it was rooted squarely in their platonic affection for one another, not any real passion.

The only thing it had ever amounted to were the stories they used to tease each other with. His best friend, Victoire, who he never got to see anymore because she insisted on working inhuman hours at St. Mungo’s. 

James, on the other hand… He could snog James like that for hours— until the sun came up and both their lips were numb, and they fell asleep like that, with their foreheads together. But James didn’t have the attention span for that. He was always moving, always going, always pushing eagerly towards the next thing. 

Ed didn’t mind that at all. Pushy, willing, enthusiastic, _eager_ Jay. It wasn’t a bad place to be, his world. Ed was rather hoping he’d get a lifelong stay.

* * *

Teddy woke up to a dip in his bed, the warmth of a body, and a smell like clean linens. He didn’t even open his eyes. 

“Vic,” he murmured, gratified when he grabbed hold of her waist. 

She didn’t say anything in response, and Teddy cracked his eyes open. “Vic?”

She was frozen still, and the dim light of his bedroom only just made way for the confusion on her face. “But you’re in the kitchen.”

“Ugh,” sighed Teddy, throwing his head back on the pillow. He knew he was going to have this conversation at some point — Vic was here often enough that it seemed impossible that he could avoid it forever — but he certainly didn’t intend on having the conversation _now_ , at this ungodly hour of the morning. 

“Teddy?” squeaked Victoire. “Who is in your kitchen?”

“Come on,” sighed Teddy, throwing his legs out of bed. “It’s time to meet Ed.”

He dragged her down the hall and around the corner to the kitchen, where Ed remained, miserably eating a bowl of cereal. 

“I was going to surprise you,” said Victoire, blinking. “I— I thought I’d get into bed, you’d see when you climbed in, but—“

“But I was already there?” finished Teddy. “Yeah. He scared me, too, the first time. But Ed’s benign. He comes by from time to time.”

Her voice trembled. “Does this mean you’re going to die?”

Teddy let out an alarmed noise. “Does it?”

She shook her head. “I know you never took Divination, Teddy, but _honestly_. This is basic stuff! Mum taught me this!”

“Well,” Teddy cocked his head at Ed, who looked increasingly likely to throw his cereal at the wall and be done with it. “Ginny never did have a keen third eye.”

Vic’s bottom lip jutted out for just a second — Teddy’s heart clenched at the sight of it — before she conjured the nerve to continue. “Being haunted by yourself — seeing your doppelgänger, that is — is an omen of death.”

He couldn’t deny the cool tingle her words sent flowing through him, but he squared his shoulders. Behind him, he flicked on the light switch. Ed didn’t seem to notice, but the light was better on him now.

“Not a ghost,” promised Teddy. “Too colorful for that. I have no plans to die anytime soon. He’ll go away as soon as he leaves the kitchen to go to another part of the flat, I promise. Come to bed, Vic, it’s late.”

She tore her eyes away from the specter at the counter. “Well, I’m awake now.”

“Me too,” he admitted. 

She grinned a familiar grin that made his stomach do giddy, fluttery things. “In that case…”

* * *

Molly Maeve was in his kitchen. But wasn’t her — not exactly — because his Molly Maeve had a short fringe and hair that ended bluntly at her chin. This person, whoever they were, had long hair down their back. Just as dark, just as straight, but with no fringe. The same glasses, though, Ed caught. The kind that tapered into a triangle at the edge. Cat eye, Molly Maeve had called them.

Clearly, his salt-and-sage approach had not worked. He cast a feeble glance to the windowpanes of his living room, still lined with the mineral. 

“You barely have enough milk in here for one cup of tea, let alone three,” she said, drawing Ed’s attention again.

They spoke just the same, these Mollys. That short, clipped tone— pristinely logical even in its haughtiest moments of protest. 

Ghost-Ed appeared in the kitchen. “Well, Merlin, MJ, just duplicate it.”

He could understand it— Molly Junior and all. Ed liked a short name.

“Teddy,” she sighed heavily. “You— just— I worry about you sometimes.” She poured the contents of the milk jug into the cup Ghost-Ed always drank out of. 

“It’s just milk. Worry about bigger things, Unspeakable Weasley.”

She let out an impatient noise that Ed recognized well. “ _Not_ an Unspeakable.”

“Of course not.”

“Just… take care of yourself, okay? I hardly see you these days, and I worry. I do.” MJ frowned at her cup of tea. 

Teddy looked at her curiously, but nodded. “Sure thing, MJ.”

They disappeared out of the kitchen together, and Ed blinked for a moment in the wake of their interaction. Teddy, MJ had called him.

 _Teddy_. The word felt unfamiliar in his mouth when he spoke it to himself. Ed hadn’t gone by Teddy in, well, forever. Gran called him Ed, _my sweet Ed_ , words round and full with endearment for as long as he could remember. 'Teddy' was the nickname his parents had left behind for him, but it felt wrong from anyone else’s mouth. They gave him Edward. He did his best to honor it. 

Maybe when he was younger a few people called him Teddy, but he couldn’t say for sure now. He had a few hazy memories of Harry and Ginny and long nights of babysitting, but it had died out when Ed learned to speak and introduced himself the way he loved hearing his name best. 

He was Edward Lupin — Ed — and he liked the way just two letters could be his whole person.

* * *

  
  


To Teddy’s shock, someone else crossed the threshold of the kitchen. It was James, Teddy’s god-brother, and he took a seat at the island next to Ed. 

Teddy furrowed his brows. Jamie? But Jamie had lived in Egypt for years now. They kept regular correspondence, sure, and James made sure to smuggle Teddy some plant fossils, but they hadn’t spoken like this since Teddy moved out. 

“Hey,” said James in that familiar, bright tone. 

“Good morning, love.” Ed reached out and tucked a strand of James’s long russet hair behind his ear.

Teddy’s eyes widened. _Love?_ But— that was Jamie! Harry’s Jamie! The same one Teddy had grown up right beside, shared wall and all. Jamie, who had insisted relentlessly that he would be an Auror before deciding, abruptly and passionately, that his life called to him from far-away archeological sites like his Uncle Bill’s.

James took a swig of Ed’s tea. “Got you something.”

“Oh? If it’s what I think it is, I’m going to need twenty minutes.”

Teddy almost gagged. It was like watching Harry and Ginny flirt, but worse— because he was watching _himself_ , and he was making a very bold go of it. 

James grinned. “Well, that wasn’t what I had in mind…” He deposited a velvet box on the counter, and Ed and Teddy gasped in synch.

Ed’s eyes shifted in equal shock between James and the ring. “Jay, are you—“

“No, no,” interjected James. “See, this is for _you_ so you can propose to _me_ when it’s good and convenient for you.”

Ed let out a noise between a groan and a laugh — deeply sheepish — and buried his head against Jamie’s shoulder. 

“Because you seem to be taking your bloody time with it.” James teased, running a hand through the back of Ed’s hair with a familiarity that made something melt in Teddy. 

He was just struggling to wrap his head around it all. This Ed and this Jay — so distant from the life Teddy had known — seemed to navigate each other with the same ease and affection that he did with Victoire. It was so strange to see his own life played out for him in an entirely different way.

“Gold, because I’m worth it, obviously,” said James. “And I was thinking you could get silver. It’ll go better with your hair.”

“James…” Ed’s eyes were watery. 

It caught Teddy off guard. Was this not his hardened-Auror-self? He’d seen Ed scan through reports in this very kitchen with all the seriousness Teddy could never quite find for himself. But here he was, laughing and flirting and crying just like Teddy did. 

“When you’re ready,” assured James. “I’ll be waiting to give you my wholehearted yes.”

Ed kissed him full on the mouth, and Teddy didn’t have the heart to look away.

* * *

Molly Maeve frowned at her notepad. The muggle pen she was carrying had recently exploded black ink over her hand, but she didn’t seem to have noticed yet. 

“It just doesn’t make _sense_ ,” she said.

Ed couldn’t help but agree. The flat they’d been sent to looked unruffled, and the sensors he and Molly Maeve carried made no indication of any recent apparition in the immediate vicinity. Ed had already checked the Floo records before Harry sent him and Molly Maeve to the scene.

“It could have been accidental magic,” offered Ed. 

Molly Maeve shot him a withering look. “Yeah, not bloody likely. The lady, Stevenson, is — well, was — 50. How many 50-year-olds do you know with accidental magic issues?”

Ed was struggling to find another reason why anything like this could have happened here. She had been completely alone in her flat when, suddenly, she’d aged up forty years. If she hadn’t been jinxed or poisoned with an age potion, what else could it be?

The Floo erupted in a flash of lime green. Two mediwizards tumbled out of the fire, with robes to match the flames. Ed pocketed his own notepad, perfectly aware that staring at the thin blue lines of the pages was not pushing him any closer to a breakthrough. 

He turned to the mediwizards, expecting one of the crowd he tended to see at the site of accidents like these. The mediwizards were a subset of Healers who were trained in crisis management, the kind that showed up to the scenes of crimes or came to house calls in the case of an emergency. Their sleeves generally had dark green bands around them to distinguish them from the other Healers, but Ed had come face to face with a completely different person than he was expecting. All lime green robes, disheveled blonde hair.

“Victoire?” he asked, eyes bulging. “What are you doing here?”

She looked like she was asking herself the same question. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and, perhaps, surprise. “He just grabbed me — said there was a crisis," she panted. "The other mediwitch on his team got dispatched elsewh…” She trailed off, scanning the room. “Where is the patient?”

Ed blinked. He had never seen Victoire so direct, eyes distant but hyper-focused on her craft. 

He often came across her in the hospital when he was interviewing witnesses, but this felt different. He frowned. “Up the stairs to the right. She went for a lie down. The age—“

“I know,” said Victoire. “We’ve got the other one in my usual ward. It’s a good thing Roberts grabbed me of all the other Healers…”

And then she darted up the stairs, her hair falling out of a bun at the nape of her neck. 

_The other one?_

Ed stood rooted on the same spot he had been when Victoire appeared through the fire, no less confused than he had been before her entrance. He managed to lift his feet, though not without effort, and make his way back over to the hallway where Molly Maeve was running a sensor over the door to the toilet for what had to have been the twentieth time.

“There’s another one in St. Mungo’s already. Another age progression case!”

Molly Maeve glared at the projection above her sensor, which still was not offering any explanations they wanted. With a sigh, she clicked it off. “Well, that’s good then.”

“How could you say that? No, it’s _not_ good, this means this is happening to more people!”

“It means,” she said, exhausted and pocketing her sensor, “that this is an Unspeakable problem. What else can we do? There was no forced entry, no lingering apparitive magic, no Floo records… Nobody did this _to_ her, Ed. It wasn’t accidental magic, but it might as well have been. The Unspeakables will take this over, and it will be off our plates. They’ve got a Time Room and everything.”

He was glad she wasn’t looking at him, because Ed was staring at her, slack-jawed, like she was the key to everything.

* * *

Teddy had brewed all of his potions early that day— they were all contained in shatterproof bottles he had ordered specially from the magical district of Venice. He was such a regular patron that he got a discount, and the owls that delivered his crates charged him only in food and affection. He was not quite sure what that said about him, but the discount was nice, and Teddy wasn’t one to go asking questions where there were no good answers. 

He resolved to pull himself out of his flat for once. To see the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, which he paid so much to live on, in real life instead of through his windows. But then he caught sight of a perfect bouquet of flowers, and it was like fate itself had decided the trajectory of his day. 

He appeared with a crack at St. Mungo’s internal apparition point. He made short work of the journey up to the pediatric ward where Victoire worked. She was undoubtedly on rounds— she’d pulled another twenty-four hour shift. He resented them on her behalf, but she never seemed to manage his level of resentment. 

“They’re just so cute,” she would say. “But they’re sick and scared and lonely, Teddy.” And then he would feel like a real jerk for wanting his own girlfriend in bed with him. 

He came up behind her while she scribbled something onto a clipboard just outside the 14-17 age wing. “Delivery for one Victoire Weasley.”

Vic turned, brows up in delight. “Teddy— what? Oh, _Teddy_!”

“Too much?” He felt heat creep into his cheeks. 

“No, no,” she rushed forward, peppering his face with kisses. “Good. Perfect, I promise. Oh, we can give them to the new patient!”

Teddy thought to mention that they were for _her_ , not her patients, but she looked so overjoyed at the thought of it. He followed her eager strides across the floor, to someone in the 11-14 wing. The girl they approached sat primly at the edge of her hospital bed, nose lightly scrunched. 

“Mrs. Stevenson, I thought you might like these flowers.”

It took all of his self restraint not to squeak out a protest. _Mrs?_ For a girl who looked nigh on twelve?

The scrunch of the girl’s nose relaxed as she leaned in to sniff the arrangement. “Yes, well… They are quite lovely.”

“You like them?”

Teddy’s bewilderment only grew. Vic looked almost _shy_. 

“They will do.”

Vic beamed. “Mrs. Stevenson, allow me to present my partner, Teddy Lupin.”

Teddy shot Vic a curious glance that she did not see. _Partner_. They’d never talked much about how they called themselves— Teddy usually said girlfriend and was done with it, but he liked this better. There was substance in partner. It was a promise. 

“Lupin, you say?”

“Yeah,” said Teddy.

Her eyes welled up with tears. “Yes. That’s— wonderful, I say, wonderful. Professor Lupin, he… he taught my N.E.W.T year.”

Teddy blinked. “He taught your what?”

“Oh,” interjected Vic, flushing. “I’m sorry, Teddy, I didn’t explain— patient confidentiality laws, you know. Mrs. Stevenson, would you care to…?”

She flushed a deep pink, but nodded. “Well, you see, my toilet has been haunted for several weeks now. Gurgling and whistling and the like. I haven’t used it since. I need to find a proper exorcist— I’m sure you understand the hassle. But yesterday I— well, it was an emergency, and I made the mistake of using that toilet! The moment I sat down to pee, it was like my whole body shrunk and squeezed, and next thing I knew, I was looking at an entirely different set of legs!”

Teddy did his best to summarize. “So… Your toilet triggered some kind of aging hex?”

Mrs. Stevenson nodded, still pink. “That about covers it.”

Vic was looking frantically between the two of them, and Teddy leapt to fill the silence. “You know, I know a woman who is a stellar exorcist. Not professionally or anything, she’s just had a lot of practice. Have you ever met Luna Scamander?”

* * *

James didn’t look like he was quite getting it. “The Time Room… You think the key is the Time Room.”

Ed nodded, pacing around James’s living room. “Yes! Don’t you see? I’m being haunted by my own future ghost! That’s what he — Teddy — is doing in my kitchen.”

“So you think you’ll die in your kitchen? In what, the next year?” James wasn’t even doing him the favor of looking worried. Ed tried not to be annoyed at that. 

“That’s the idea, isn’t it? I need someone from the Department of Mysteries to come investigate.”

“There’s only one hole in this argument of yours,” said James.

“And what’s that?”

“Kitchen deaths involve cooking, Ed. When was the last time you cooked anything?”

A defensive noise ripped out of his throat. “There’s better food at your flat!”

“Just because you don’t buy any.” James said, not quite scoldingly.

“Move in, then,” blurted Ed. At James’s confused but delighted expression, he continued. “Move in and you can cook for me. No kitchen deaths if you’re the one making the food.”

James laughed. “I see. One big ploy to get me to be your house husband.”

He felt a delectable warmth begin in his stomach. “Am I that transparent?”

“Not as transparent as the other guy,” teased James. 

Ed groaned a laugh, and despite the concern that weighed heavily on his shoulders, he could not stop himself from grabbing James by the face to kiss his perfect mouth. 

* * *

“Merlin, Teddy, this is a toad mansion,” said MJ, almost bewildered, and pointing at the large glass enclosure that occupied most of the table under one of the windows in his living room.

“It’s a vivarium,” said Teddy, almost defensively. 

“It’s bigger than my owl’s cage.” MJ walked around the sides of it, kneeling a bit to try and get a glimpse at the toad Teddy brought home all those weeks ago.

It had started as sort of a joke. Teddy never had a pet at Hogwarts. The Potter family owl had been more than enough for communication, and Lily’s evil cat had almost scared him off pets entirely. But then he got the toad, and he couldn’t help but feel a growing attachment to it. 

He crossed his arms. “Well, your owl gets to fly wherever it wants. Ed only has this vivarium and my lap when we’re watching TV.”

“We,” she echoed. 

“Don’t tease him,” said Vic, only half-stern, as she came into the living room. “He’s sensitive about it.”

“I’m not—“ Teddy tried, but it was futile.

MJ frowned like she had encountered a particularly gnarly equation. “He named it after himself.”

Vic rounded on him, eyes alight and a big smile on her face. “Did you really? I thought you were just calling the thing Toadie!”

“He named it Ed,” confirmed MJ.

“Molly Maeve Weasley!” He looked helplessly at Vic, who made no attempts to intervene on his behalf. “It’s not Ed for Edward! It’s... Edmund.”

She lifted both brows. “Edmund.”

“MJ, repeating everything I say doesn’t make me say anything different.”

“No, but maybe if you hear it from _my_ mouth you’ll hear how ridiculous it sounds,” she said fairly.

It was clear from the giddy look on Vic’s face that she loved to be in the middle of their squabbles. He sighed, knowing a hopeless battle when he saw one. When he looked back at MJ, her entire face had changed: pale and drawn in tight lines.

“MJ?” he asked, a trickle of concern in his voice.

“Teddy— your kitchen—“

He spun on his heel, looking right over his couch to his watercolor self, wand behind his ear, leaning against the counter in front of a massive pile of documents. “Oh,” he sighed, relieved.

Vic was on her feet at once, rushing into the kitchen. She stood in front of the apparition, much closer to him now than Teddy had ever been. “Merlin’s beard,” she exhaled. “It’s you! I mean, look at it! I didn’t get a good look at it last time, but it’s… astonishing, really.”

MJ balked. “Last time?”

“No need to look so closely at him, Vic, I have the same face.” Teddy said, almost jealous, craning his neck to watch Vic’s meticulous inspection. She stuck out her tongue at him. 

MJ’s eyes cycled between the two of them. “You two don’t look surprised.”

Teddy wrung his hands behind his back. “Well, that’s because that’s Ed.”

MJ looked confused. “I thought Ed was your toad?”

Vic reached out to place a hand on top of Ed’s, resting against the counter. He shivered, and reached out with his other hand to scratch absentmindedly at the place where their hands met. 

“Can you feel him?” asked MJ, distracted. “Is it cold like a ghost?”

“No,” frowned Vic. “It feels like nothing at all.”

Teddy took his opportunity to explain. “Ed _is_ my toad. He wasn’t at first, I was calling him Toadie for a while, but I got him the same day he appeared.” He pointed at Ed, who was now rummaging through a similarly ghostly fridge. Behind it, Teddy’s real fridge remained perfectly closed. “And when I found out his name, it seemed like it fit.”

Vic took her turn with her first look of surprise. “But you got that toad almost two months ago.”

“How often does this happen?” asked MJ, brows tensed. 

Private potioneers usually worked from their homes — it was better that way, all the ingredients were just where Teddy wanted them to be — and he only really left to deliver potions to his clients that had trouble with magical travel: the pregnant, the elderly, etc. He was in this kitchen all day every day because of it, and he had every opportunity to keep track of Ed’s comings and goings.

Some days Ed never appeared at all. For days at a time, that heavy silence would lay thick on every surface in his kitchen, heady with the mix of the potion fumes. But some days, especially weekends, Ed would appear at the threshold, stumbling in pajamas Teddy did not recognize, to grab food and Pepper-Ups. 

He told them all of this, warm with something approximating embarrassment. “And it’s not a ghost, obviously. So I’m not sure what it is.”

MJ’s face was a solid sheet of shock, a contrast to Vic’s dizzying rotation of reactions. The two Weasley girls exchanged a look, and Vic’s expression changed, now bright with a look Teddy recognized well. She’d put something together. 

“I— I have an idea—“ she grabbed her coat. 

Teddy made a noise of protest. “Vic! It’s pizza night!” He directed a pleading look at MJ for support, who was still wide-eyed.

“Come with me if you must! And that’s nothing a good stasis charm can’t fix!”

* * *

Molly Maeve appeared at his desk with a look that meant nothing good. Ed almost sighed. It had been a normal day— he hadn’t seen Teddy in the kitchen this morning at all, and it had made for a pleasant breakfast alone. He just wanted to get some work done, go to James’s flat after work to help him pack… 

“What is it?” he asked, knowing her too well to bother with the pleasantries at all.

“Do you remember that flat we got sent to last week?” She was fully in his cubicle now, whispering to keep anyone from hearing. “With the age advancement case?”

“Of course,” said Ed, straighter in his chair now. They had given him the idea to look into the Time Room about his haunting— an avenue he was still exploring between the pages of files after hours. 

“I was right. I caught Jenkins speaking about it to Uncle Harry, and they said something about passing it off to the Unspeakables. The Healers are at a loss.”

“The Healers— Victoire! Have you written to her?”

Molly Maeve shook her head, but pulled an envelope out of her pocket. “No, but she’s written me.”

Ed pouted briefly — she could have written to _him_ — but Molly Maeve leveled him a cool glare that made the look on his face vanish at once. “Fine, fine. Let me read it.”

The letter was longer than Victoire’s normal style, and rich with medical detail that made Ed’s eyes bug. Victoire never toed the line of the law, especially not about her patients, but this… this was a clear violation of all the privacy laws the hospital was so careful to maintain. The letter felt heavier in his hands knowing Victoire was risking her whole career to send it. 

His eyes caught over a few lines. _Mimics the natural aging process exactly… No traces of foreign magic in the blood…_

“What does this mean?” 

“Don’t you see?” said Molly Maeve. “This has everything to do with your haunting.”

Ed paled, looking around the office to see if anyone had heard. “What are you on about? How do you know about that?”

She rolled her eyes. “One, you’ve been acting strangely for months now. Two, you always have to go ‘check the archives’ for something. Three, James let it slip to Ginny.”

“ _Jay_ ,” sighed Ed, rubbing his forehead. 

“And, well, you know how my family works. Ginny told George, George told Dad, and Dad asked me about it the other day. He knows a great exorcist, if you’re interested.”

“I don’t need a bloody—“ Ed cut himself off, shaking his head. “Does Harry know?”

“Obviously. He’s been turning a blind eye to your file-pilfering for months.”

Ed found himself repeating something into his hands that he’d muttered to himself ages ago now. “Ed Lupin, former Auror.”

“Don’t be thick,” she said, frowning. “You’re one of the best Aurors in the field. They won’t fire you.”

He wasn’t so sure he believed that. “Just— what do you mean this is related to my haunting?”

Molly Maeve flattened the letter on his desk. “Well, it’s not a haunting at all.”

* * *

Eight o’clock was a busy time at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies if the Healer side entrance was anything to go by. It was a sea of lime green robes, the rhythmic sound of the door opening and closing, and the crack of apparition all around. 

“It’s a big shift change right now,” said Vic, looking down at her watch. “Come on, before someone notices that you’re not Healers.”

MJ followed stealthily behind, but Teddy blinked for a few moments before leaping into action. Trust MJ and her not-Unspeakable skills to get her moving with ease and precision. Teddy only hoped he could trust himself not to knock anything over. 

He managed, though, and they made their way to the elevator without arousing too much suspicion. “Vic, where are we going?”

She pushed a button on the elevator with enthusiasm. “The children’s ward. I think Mrs. Stevenson has more to do with this than we previously thought.”

“Oh?” said Teddy. “And how much did we previously think?”

Because Teddy had never quite thought the weird age magic had anything to do with his watercolor doppelgänger. Vic looked confident though, and MJ was keeping a mask of calm that seemed totally out of character for her. 

Teddy stopped dead in his tracks. The girls came to a halt, too, looking back at him.

“What is it?” asked Vic.

It clicked for him then— the pieces that were floating around him, the ones he hadn’t been putting all that much of an effort into stringing together. 

“You know,” he said to MJ, gobsmacked. “You know what this is already, don’t you?”

MJ, who seemed worried about Teddy for reasons beyond his comprehension. He _had_ been strange since Ed showed up — a little more manic, a little more housebound — but nothing truly alarming. But she furrowed her brows when she thought he was not looking, and she disappeared at work for days on end. 

“Is that true, M?” asked Vic.

MJ shifted on her feet. “Even if I did know, I couldn’t say. Unspeakables take vows.”

“So you _are_ an Unspeakable,” said Teddy.

“I didn’t say that,” she said carefully. “I said Unspeakables take vows.”

But she also didn’t say no. Teddy and Vic shared a look, and Teddy started thinking out loud. “There’s a Time Room in the Department of Mysteries, isn’t there?”

Vic’s eyes lit up. “Come on. Let’s find Mrs. Stevenson.”

* * *

“What do you mean it’s not a haunting?” said Ed, bewildered. 

“Lupin! Weasley! It’s after hours, clock out and get home.” 

Ed felt his blood run cold, and he turned in alarm to the entrance to his cubicle. But it was just Harry, leaning against the edge of Ed’s cubicle with a smug look on his face. 

Molly Maeve had her hand over her chest. “Merlin, Uncle Harry. I saw my life flash before my eyes! I thought you were Jenkins.”

“It was too easy,” he teased, green eyes sparkling behind his glasses. “Just as gullible as you were when you were children, you two.”

“I was _not_ gullible—“ began Molly Maeve hotly.

“So what are you two investigating here?” Harry cut her off with a grin. “I know all the signs of someone trying to solve a mystery they’re not supposed to. Don’t even bother trying to hide it.”

Ed and Molly Maeve exchanged a look. He waited for her to say something— he didn’t want to get either of them in trouble. She didn’t though, and she stared at her imperfect manicure with a scrunched nose. Ed bit his cheek for a moment before taking the leap.

“The ghost,” he said, by way of explanation. “I’m sure Jay told you?”

Harry nodded. “Well, no, but Ginny did.”

Ed rolled his eyes— the mouths on that family! None of them could keep a secret to save their lives. 

Molly Maeve re-engaged. “I was just telling Ed that it’s not a haunting at all. It’s got to do with time magic. But you knew that already, didn’t you, Uncle Harry?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m really not the one you should ask. That letter is from Victoire, is it?”

“Yes,” said Ed, nervous now.

“Well, she’s cleverer than all three of us put together. And I bet she knows more than she lets on.” Harry leaned back off the cubicle, nodding to them both. “I’ll see you on Sunday for dinner, won’t I?”

“Yes, but—“ began Ed.

“See you Sunday,” winked Harry, and he ambled away without a second look back. 

* * *

Mrs. Stevenson was eating a pudding cup in bed with all the elegance of a much older woman. With her body so young now, she looked small in the bed, and tinier still in a hospital gown that was far too big on her. 

“Healer Weasley?” she said, brow up. “Mr. Lupin! And…?”

“Just MJ,” she said, arms across her chest uncomfortably. 

“Sorry to disturb you so late,” said Vic. “I just had some questions about the weeks leading up to the change. You said your toilet was haunted. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?”

MJ uncrossed her arms now, taking a tentative step closer. Teddy wasn’t sure who to focus on: Vic, hanging off Mrs. Stevenson’s every word; MJ, eyes wide with interest, or Mrs. Stevenson herself, who had set her pudding cup aside and readied herself to begin her story.

“It started about two months ago. I walked by the loo one night, and the toilet flushed. I thought it was odd— my husband died in the war, and I never remarried, so I have lived alone for over twenty years now. I tried to dismiss it, because when I opened the door, nobody was in there. It continued like that. I’d hear the tap run, or hear whistling from inside, but when I would finally make it to the loo to look inside, it was empty. I figured my bathroom was just haunted.”

“It didn’t happen anywhere else in the house?” asked Teddy.

Mrs. Stevenson shook her head. “And when I used that toilet the other day, the change happened.”

“You _never_ saw anyone inside?” asked MJ, brows knitted.

Mrs. Stevenson bit her lip as she thought back on it. “Well— I thought maybe, but surely it was just a trick of the light...”

“What did you see?” pressed Vic, hardly containing her excitement anymore. 

Mrs. Stevenson blushed. “It was probably just my reflection in the mirror and a weird trick of the light, but I could have sworn I saw myself.”

“As you were before?” asked MJ, eyes wide with anticipation. “Or as you are now— young?”

“Young,” said Mrs. Stevenson. “Why? Do you think you know what did this?”

If Teddy was perfectly honest with himself, he had more questions now than before.


	2. Chapter 2

Ed hadn’t been to St. Mungo’s since the time Molly Maeve accidentally hexed him on an assignment. It had been a gnarly accident— they’d had to scrap the whole mission, and Teddy had spent a week leaking cold, green blood from his ears in a hospital bed. 

Molly Maeve felt terribly guilty, James fretted over him almost as much as his Gran had, but Victoire couldn’t walk past him without bursting into uncontrollable laughter. 

It looked busy for almost nine on a Thursday evening, but Ed supposed accidents tended to strike when you were least expecting them. 

“What ward does she work on?” asked Molly Maeve, standing on her tiptoes to get a sight of the directory on the wall. 

“Janus Thickey,” Ed said. “Long term patients. It’s on the fourth floor, I think.”

“Let’s go.” Molly Maeve started towards the elevator, but Ed hesitated. 

“Let me call Jay, quick? I told him I’d head to his flat after work, but…”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, fine. He can come along if he wants.”

“Really?” Ed perked.

“Yes, of course, just go already! I’ll find Victoire and tell her what we know.” 

They parted ways with a nod, and Molly Maeve’s short hair swished around her head as she darted between families and patients. Ed headed the opposite direction, to the row of fireplaces in the entryway that the hospital provided for this exact purpose. 

He found the first open fireplace he saw, and threw the Floo powder in before he had even fully kneeled down. “James Potter’s flat, Dorset, England.”

The fire lit, and Ed peered into it impatiently. Distantly, he could hear singing off-key from the kitchen. “James. Jay!”

The singing stopped at once, and Ed could practically envision James’s ears twitching towards the fireplace like a puppy’s. 

“Jay!” he called again.

Footsteps pounded until James appeared in the flames, hair still wet from a clearly recent shower and undoubtedly tangled. “Ed? What’s wrong— did you get called to stay late?”

Ed shook his head. “No, it’s not that— we think we have a breakthrough on the haunting front.”

James blinked. “We? Who is we?”

“Molly Maeve. _Someone_ told Ginny, who told — sod it, I can’t remember the order, but Molly Maeve knows, and we’re at St. Mungo’s—“

“What?” James’s face shifted, plainly panicked. 

“Come! I’ll explain everything when you—“

It must have not taken much encouragement on his part, because before he knew it, James was landing face-first from the other side of the Floo right onto Ed’s lap. Ed groaned, his back to the floor. “Jay!”

James’s hair was wet, and it smelled clean and sweet like that fruity shampoo he stole from Lily’s flat last Christmas. 

He propped himself on his elbows, grinning down at Ed. “Sorry.”

Ed sat up, pushing James off his lap gently. “Come on. Molly Maeve is waiting on the fourth floor.”

They made short work of the journey, and Ed explained everything as they went. 

James laughed. “Honestly, Ed, I don’t know why you didn’t _start_ with Victoire. When has there ever been a problem she couldn’t solve?”

They crossed into the ward, hand in hand, and Ed dragged his eyes across the width of the room for Victoire’s silver-blonde hair. He found it in a corner, next to Molly Maeve, standing hunched over a clipboard. 

“There,” said Ed, pointing, and he and James scurried across the room. 

Victoire and Molly Maeve caught sight of them before they even finished their trek, and nodded between themselves.

“Alright, Jay?” asked Victoire, ruffling James’s half-dry hair. 

He scowled, flattening it out. Ed bit back a smile, redirecting his focus to the witches in front of him. “What have we gathered, then?”

He felt almost self-conscious that James would see him like this— his Auror persona bleeding into his personal life. Molly Maeve had seen him like this, of course, and Victoire had seen snippets of it in moments where work brought him to the hospital, but he had made a concerted effort to keep James out of it. Jay was sweet and giddy and untainted, and Ed needed the biggest stressor in their home life to be the predicted outcomes of James’s next Quidditch game. Not Ed’s work, not his hours, and not whatever threat might be looming.

But James didn’t look too bothered by Ed’s business-as-usual attitude— if anything, he looked deeply intrigued, and his amber eyes traced the lines of Ed’s face in a familiar, comforting way.

Victoire let out a half-frustrated breath. “I just— I’ve been puzzling over this for so long. I mean, I saw the connection as soon as I met both the patients… The way they described their houses wasn’t unlike the haunting I heard about from Uncle Percy.”

“Your dad told him?” James asked Molly Maeve, affronted. “How’d it get to him?”

She shrugged in a disinterested way, and Victoire let out a much-needed laugh. When she spoke next, her voice sounded much lighter. 

“The man — Kellan Beam — was in his thirties. He said his living room was haunted. He’s just over there, actually.”

Victoire pointed discreetly across the room to an ancient looking man, so weathered by time that his skin was loose and thin on his face. 

“Can we talk to him?” Ed asked. “I want to know if he ever saw anyone.”

“You did, didn’t you? In your haunting?” asked Victoire, and it occurred to him suddenly that he’d never explained it to her completely. 

“Yeah,” answered James on his behalf. “I’ve seen it, too. It looks just like him, exactly as he is now. And it’s _always_ there. At least, it is when I’m there. Brewing potions most of the time.”

Victoire snorted. “I thought Molly Maeve said it was your doppelgänger?”

Ed flushed. “I got an O in Potions just the same as you!”

“Can we see him, then?” asked Molly Maeve, bringing them back to center. “He looks like he’s about to fall asleep.”

“It _is_ late,” Ed frowned.

“He’s okay,” Victoire assured. “He’s been having some trouble adjusting to his new body, but he’s been drinking so many Pepper-Ups that I don’t think he could sleep if he tried.”

Victoire led them over to his bedside. Up close, Ed could see the large brown splotches on the back of his hand from aging, and he made a mental note to try them on later when he was alone. He liked the look of them: irregular splotches like kisses on the hand from time itself. 

“Mr. Beam?” asked Victoire. His eyes had fluttered shut, but they pushed back open when her voice sounded. 

“I’m good,” he promised. He rubbed his eyes. “And please, it’s Kellan. I swear I’m not as old as I look. Do you need to run tests or something?”

His voice didn’t sound young, but his words did, and the dichotomy caught Ed off guard. 

“No, my friend was just wondering if you could explain your haunting to him? He’s had something similar happen in his flat.”

Kellan scowled. “Just move out, it’s not worth it.”

“How do you mean?” asked Ed.

“Look at me! I’m on death’s door!”

Victoire frowned. “You are in perfect health for a man of your age.”

“My _age_ is thirty-two. My _body_ is eighty.” Kellan shook his head. “I thought it was just your average haunting— this old man and his wife kept appearing in my living room, turning on my T.V., slow dancing to music I’d never heard of… I thought it was cute! I mean, how are you supposed to exorcise a sweet old man?”

Ed furrowed his brow. “But now _you’re_ old. The man— what did he look like?”

Kellan scowled deeper still. “Exactly like this.”

* * *

“MJ, come on, I know you know more than you’re letting on,” said Teddy. They’d all excused themselves quickly, darting into a small, private room on the same floor. 

“If my partner is going to get turned into an eleven year old, I would like a heads up,” added Vic. 

MJ let out an impatient huff, like she was tired of doing all the work for them, despite not having contributed at all. “There was more than one patient admitted with an age disturbance, wasn’t there?”

Vic frowned, nodding. “Kellan Beam— male, 30s. They have him up in the under 10 section. He turned into a five year old…”

Teddy gnawed on his lip. “Mrs. Stevenson turned into her younger self… I bet you anything that Beam bloke turned into his past self, too. But me— I’ve got my current self. Well, a version of it. Ed Lupin, not Teddy.”

* * *

“The other one called himself Teddy,” explained Ed, once he, Victoire, Jay, and Molly Maeve had pulled themselves to a more deserted part of the corridor. “The ghost.”

“Not a ghost,” insisted Molly Maeve. “It just doesn’t make sense if it's haunting, does it? Is he cold? Did he look like the ghosts at Hogwarts?”

“Kellan described seeing them in color when he first came in. Not black and white,” added Victoire, gnawing on her lip. 

“Exactly!” said Molly Maeve, vindicated.

“What do we know about him?” interjected James. “We know he’s Teddy. Like, I said he’s always making potions when I see him— I bet you anything he’s a private potioneer.”

“He’s dating Victoire,” said Ed.

“Gross.” Victoire scrunched her nose. “No offense.”

He felt oddly attacked. “We’d be great together!”

Victoire looked at him like he was the thickest person she’d met. “Ed. You’re gay.”

James laughed so loudly that a Healer passing by shot them all a dirty look. Ed blushed a little, and James bumped his shoulder against Ed’s with a smile.

Victoire’s expression changed, realizing something slowly. 

“What is it?” asked Molly Maeve. 

“The man—” Victoire scrambled for her clipboard, hanging at her waist by a carabiner. She unhooked it swiftly, flicking through parchment. “The old man— Kellan said he saw him dancing with his wife.”

“What about it?” 

“But it says right here— Kellan is already married. His husband’s name is George Lawley.”

* * *

Teddy gasped, stopping himself short as it dawned on him. “Merlin, how didn’t we think of it before? I was wrong— it’s not future selves or past selves—“

Vic seemed to be following his line of thought. She matched his expression with eager eyes. “It’s alternate selves— alternate lives.”

“No,” Teddy shook his head, grinning. “Alternate _timelines_. Isn’t it, Unspeakable Weasley?”

MJ pursed her lips. “Officially, I’m not an Unspeakable.”

“And unofficially?”

“I’m not commenting on the unofficial,” she said, and Teddy and Vic grinned the same grin.

* * *

“But there’s another question here,” said Molly Maeve, frowning, when they had put it all together. “Alternate timelines are all well and good, but why are they bleeding into each other? Why are they broken, and why did the other two experience age shifts while Ed is fine?”

“And… are they all looking into the same timeline? Or are they looking into different timelines?” James said, pushing his now dried hair out of his face.

Ed hadn’t quite pushed past the idea that he wasn’t going to die. He’d been so convinced — for months now — that he was waiting to catch his death above a cauldron in his own kitchen. And now that Victoire had lined it all up, put together the pieces they’d all been missing, he didn’t know how he didn’t catch it sooner. It wasn’t an omen of Ed’s death, it was a glimpse into Teddy’s. 

“I don’t think it matters so much what timeline it looks into,” said Victoire. “The problem must be on our end, don’t you think? Something’s off with the durability of this dimension.”

Molly Maeve frowned deeper still. “So… How do we fix it?”

* * *

“There’s someone we haven’t spoken to yet, and I’m surprised neither of you thought of it,” said MJ, almost disappointed. She shook her head. “Do you or do you not have a direct Floo connection into the Minister’s house?”

Vic let out a delighted gasp. “Unspeakables can’t talk about their work... But Hermione could!”

Teddy liked the sound of that idea, but exhaustion was starting to pull at his eyes now, and there was no point bursting in to have a conversation that may take them hours.

“Tomorrow,” he said, looking over his shoulder to the direction where Mrs. Stevenson lay. “Everyone needs some sleep.”

“You’re not going back to your flat,” said Vic fiercely. “Come to mine. I don’t need some dimensional rip messing with my boyfriend.”

“Your partner,” corrected Teddy.

The intensity melted from her face, and she smiled softly. “My partner.”

* * *

Ed furrowed his brow. “There’s only one person I know who could know the answer.”

“Aunt Hermione?” asked James.

Ed lifted a brow. “I was thinking about my Gran.”

* * *

It was not the first breakfast Teddy had ever had at the Granger-Weasley house, but it was the first that he had gate-crashed. Vic thought to write ahead, but MJ implied in the vaguest terms that it might be easier to corner Hermione in her own home than to ask her nicely. Teddy never pegged MJ for the type that played dirty, but he took her suggestion in stride. 

He tumbled out of their Floo at eight in the morning, Vic hot on his heels, and MJ right behind, and he caught them so off guard that Hugo dropped his spoon right into his cereal. The confusion on their faces was only amplified by his best friends’ arrivals.

Ron rubbed his eyes like he was not quite sure he wasn’t dreaming. “Teddy?”

Teddy rubbed the back of his neck. “Er— hi.”

MJ elbowed him in the side, and he continued quickly, looking at Hermione now. “We know about the timeline rifts!”

Hermione pursed her lips, looking between all three of them, and set down her teacup with a sigh. “Molly—“

“Oh, don’t blame her Aunt Hermione,” pleaded Vic. “She was massively unhelpful! She didn’t tell us _anything_. She still refuses to admit she’s an Unspeakable.”

“Shocking, considering she’s such a swot,” muttered Teddy. He caught another blow from MJ’s elbow for that, but he grinned. 

Hermione shot Ron a tired look, and he met it with a sympathetic grin. “Hugo—“

“I know,” he sighed. “I’ll just go up to my bedroom. Hope you’re happy, Teddy. I can’t even eat breakfast in my own house in peace.”

“I’ll join you,” said Ron brightly. “We’ll have a round of chess.”

With the two Granger-Weasley men out of the kitchen, Hermione gestured for them to sit. 

“Really, I’m surprised it took you this long to come talk to me. We found a timeline disturbance in your flat months ago, Teddy.”

His eyes bugged. “And you didn’t think to get in touch?”

“Well, we thought it was harmless at first. Timeline rifts have been known to happen when the fabric of time gets a bit too worn out in some spaces. But then it moves, and the rift will rub up against a different timeline in a different location with entirely different people. It doesn’t usually require intervention on our part.”

“But now?” asked Vic. “There are two age regressed people in St. Mungo’s. The rifts are getting bigger, aren’t they?”

“Not bigger,” corrected Hermione, adding sugar to her tea. “The Unspeakables are still working on it— it’s very complicated stuff. I— oh, Molly, you might as well just explain it yourself. Consider yourself pardoned.”

“But the vow,” fretted Teddy. “Won’t it hurt her?”

“No,” promised Hermione. “Not if I give her permission.”

MJ took a sip of the tea Ron left behind, making herself perfectly at home. She swallowed before she spoke. 

“The rifts aren’t getting bigger. The problem is that the fabric of time is wearing thinner than normal in some places. That’s what’s happening in your flat, Teddy. That’s why you see Ed in color; why you can hear him. He’s not a ghost, you were right on that front. He’s an imprint of a different life, and one that will only get stronger if we don’t correct it.”

“But the people at St. Mungos—“ began Vic.

“The fabric moves, remember? It tries to correct itself when it notices too much erosion. Sometimes, it’s successful. Sometimes… not so much. Mrs. Stevenson saw a different timeline of her own life— one where she grew up in the house she lives in now. She grew up in Bath, not London, in this timeline. When the fabric tried to sort itself out, it overcorrected, and the spasm of time magic regressed her to the age of the wrong side.”

Teddy was only half-grasping it all, and Vic didn’t look much better off, so Hermione interjected. 

“It’s like accidental magic. You can’t control what you do or why, right? Time magic is usually just fine, the timelines stay in their bubbles, and nobody does anything to disturb them. But when it’s worn thin, it reacts in ways we can’t completely explain. Just like you do when you’re a kid.”

“So… in another timeline, Mrs. Stevenson got very old?” Teddy rubbed at his forehead. 

“Maybe,” conceded MJ. “But it’s just as likely that she didn’t change at all. See, it’s almost impossible for us to communicate with the other timelines. We don’t know how many we’re rubbing up against, or if we’re only seeing the same one over and over. The fabric of time ripples and shifts and corrects itself before it ever can rip completely. We think there’s a way to talk to the other side— some old magic, but it’s risky. Imagine if timelines start spilling into each other…”

Teddy wasn’t sure he could. 

“We _do_ know how to fix it, though,” said Hermione firmly. “We can get Unspeakables to your flat before teatime, if you’d like.”

* * *

“So,” said Andromeda, looking between the four of them with furrowed brows. “You’re telling me your haunting isn’t a haunting at all? It’s… a look into an alternate universe?”

“Timeline,” corrected Ed. “The Unspeakables have been investigating it for ages— Molly Maeve and I found the incident reports in the Auror office, but we didn’t understand what they meant.”

She heaved a sigh. “And you didn’t think to tell me this the _first_ time?”

“I didn’t know any better. It’s hardly _my_ fault the Unspeakables are unsociable bastards.”

“I’ll drink to that,” grumbled Molly Maeve, sipping her tea. 

“So, you want to seal the rift?” 

“What?” said Ed, shooting up in his chair. 

Andromeda lifted both brows. “You want it gone, don’t you? That’s what you came for help with.”

“Yes,” said Molly Maeve, just as Ed blurted, “No!”

They looked at each other, deeply surprised. 

“You’ve been on a mad hunt for weeks, Ed! You barely eat—“

“Not true!”

“You spend extra hours at work… Your office is an absolute nightmare — no, that’s a lie — it’s a conspiracy theorist’s daydream!”

Ed looked at James for support, but he was biting the inside of his cheek. 

“Jay,” Ed tried.

“She’s not wrong…” he frowned. “I mean, I love that you’re excited about something! And it was certainly fun to guess whether or not I’d have company when I went for water in the middle of the night. But you’ve been so obsessed with this, and it might be dangerous. Look at that Beam bloke.”

Ed couldn’t believe his ears. “You mean to tell me none of you are interested in hearing what Teddy has to say? You don’t want to speak to him… see what life is like on the other side of the rift?”

The air changed. Not even Molly Maeve could deny the allure of the idea. 

“But how?” asked Victoire. “Without triggering some weird side effect?”

Molly Maeve looked contemplative. “In all the other cases, there was an age gap on the other side of the rift. But you say this Teddy looks just like you. What could go wrong?”

“It could make him straight,” said James, only half-joking. 

Andromeda snorted. “Not bloody likely.”

Her laugh swiped the tension out of all of their faces. Ed found James’s hand across the table and squeezed. 

* * *

“How confident are you that you know how to get across to the other side?” asked Teddy to MJ. “Without tearing the fabric?”

MJ looked uneasily at Hermione. “90% sure.”

Teddy blinked. “You made it seem like it was a likely disaster.”

“The Department of Mysteries doesn’t like a margin of error bigger than 0.0002.”

“I don’t either,” said Hermione. “But… You have containment wards theorized, don’t you?”

“Of course.” MJ nodded. “We’re sure we could restore the rift enough to keep things from spilling out, but to keep them from influencing each other entirely is another thing.”

“They’re already influencing each other,” said Vic. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Teddy’s kitchen had never been a weak zone.”

MJ didn’t exactly concede Vic’s point, but she shot her an approving look.

“The safest course of action is to try to sew the rift shut as best we can now. We can close it enough to stop the bleeding between. Teddy will stop seeing Ed in his kitchen.”

Something occurred to Teddy for the first time.

“Do you think Ed can see me?” he asked, mildly horrified.

“It’s entirely possible.”

He and Vic exchanged a look, and she was almost pinker than he was. 

* * *

Andromeda had excused herself to go find a book that she thought might have a spell for this very thing, and Ed was in the business of dragging James to the window to chat with some semblance of privacy.

“Make me straight?” he repeated, brows up. “Are you really worried about that?”

James shuffled on his feet. “No. A bit. Sort of.”

Ed rolled his eyes. He understood how James must feel now when he was sitting Ed down for those Talk About Your Feelings teas, bribing vulnerability out of him with cake. 

James huffed. “Just… I know Victoire is your best friend. And I know what happened between you two at Hogwarts was nothing.”

“Good,” said Ed fiercely. “Because it was nothing.”

“I just don’t want you to see Teddy’s life played out for you and think that you got it wrong with me.” James sounded impossibly small, unwilling to meet Ed’s eyes.

Ed blinked, past the point of words for a moment. They came back to him in a jumble. “James… Merlin, Jay, no. How could—“ Ed shook his head. “Never, okay? I would never think that I’d gotten it wrong with you.”

James looked unconvinced, and he shuffled his feet around as he kicked one of Hellion’s stray toys.

Ed rushed on. “I feel sorry for Teddy that he doesn’t get to love you like I do. I don’t want his life— I don’t want anyone’s life! Except maybe yours, if you’re sharing it with me.”

“Yeah?” James looked up, a faint smile on his cheeks.

“Yeah. I mean, you practically proposed. You’re stuck with me now.”

James beamed, and he opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Ed’s Gran reappeared in the dining room with a heavy book in her arms. When she dropped it on the table, it made a heavy thud.

The four of them rushed to her sides, looking past her shoulders at the worn pages of a book much older than all five of them put together.

“I stole it from the Black family library when I was disowned,” explained Andromeda. “I didn’t even know what it was about when I took it. I took the first interesting title I saw in their collection of ancient books. I wanted to pull one over on my parents. I supposed I thought I’d read it one day, but…”

She cracked the book open, and it sent up a cloud of dust so thick that all of them coughed.

“It doesn’t seem like you were all that interested, Andy,” managed James between coughs.

“ _Scourgify,_ ” she said. “There. That’s better. Table of contents… ah, here! ‘On the matters of time’.”

She flipped to the middle of the book, where a drawing of worlds stacked like plates sat just below a heading of the same name. 

“I never did bother to read it from start to finish. I read the Divination section, and a bit of the rest, but most of this ancient magic is so confusing.” She pointed to a section on the other page. “But this should be everything you need to open and close the rift.”

* * *

There were two Unspeakables in Teddy’s kitchen.

One of them was MJ, and the other was someone Teddy thought he recognized from Hogwarts. He might have been a Gryffindor— Teddy couldn’t be sure. 

They’d convinced Hermione, in the end, to try to get to the other side of the rift. Not even she could deny her curiosity, and she stuck the two best researchers from the Time Room on the case. 

They were taking measurements of the kitchen, running diagnostic tests about the saturation of magics in the area, and casting spells Teddy had never heard about in his life. It was strange to see MJ at work like this. She had tied her curtain of dark hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she was so deep in focus that she hadn’t noticed it was falling out. 

Teddy sat in his living room, and Vic sat on him. She pushed her head into the crook of his neck. “If you turn into a twelve-year-old, I hope it turns me into one, too.”

“Do you?” he asked, amused. “It’s horrible to be twelve.”

“It is,” she agreed. “But it’s a bit illegal to date a twelve year old unless you’re twelve, too.”

He laughed, but he meant it when he said: “I’m glad you think about these things, Vic.” 

He brought his arms around her hips, pulling her closer to him. He liked the pressure of her against his legs. It wasn’t heavy like silence in his kitchen or like the weights he carried with him. It was just enough to push his feet right into the ground where they belonged.

“We should get a place,” he said suddenly. “When we fix the rift.”

She smiled against his neck. “I could always move in here. Right in Diagon Alley, it’s convenient for both of us.”

“I was actually thinking about a house,” he said. “In the country, maybe. A real place. The kind of place you raise a family.”

She pulled back, blinking. “Teddy…”

“If that’s what you want, of course,” he rushed. “I think Molly — Nan, that is, not MJ — might have a heart attack if we don’t get married, so it’s not a rush—“

She kissed him quickly, effectively shutting him up. “I don’t care about a sodding wedding. Between my mother and Nan, it’d be a miracle if we survived to walk down the aisle anyway. Your parents, Teddy — they had a cottage in Wales—“

“It’s ready,” called MJ. “We can start.”

Teddy squeezed her hips just once before he let her go, and she stood swiftly. The look she gave him then lingered in his mind’s eye even after she turned towards the kitchen. Those eyelids, heavy with fondness, and the small smile that he knew meant this was a conversation they’d be finishing later. 

“Stand here,” said MJ, directing Teddy to the very center of the kitchen. 

They’d marked the whole thing off with muggle painter’s tape, finding the perimeter and the center in neat blue lines. A circle of yellow magic encased the wider perimeter of the room, disappearing onto the other sides of walls where the circle was too wide for the square spaces of his kitchen. 

“Is Vic coming in, too?” he asked the Unspeakables. They exchanged a fittingly silent look, and MJ nodded.

“She can, if you want.”

Teddy was almost embarrassed about the need he felt on his own face, but Vic crossed the threshold into the kitchen without hesitation. 

“You don’t need to stand in the center, Vic. Only Teddy because it’s his alternate we’re trying to find.”

His watercolor self, he thought. Come to life. 

* * *

There wasn’t exactly enough room for all four of them in Ed’s kitchen, but they were standing in different corners, all looking at each other like they expected the rest to do something. It occurred to Ed that it should probably be him. His ghost, his kitchen. His problem.

He flicked open the book. There were two main spells. One to open, one to close. The book didn’t offer much description otherwise. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d read it. Of course, they’d spent a good hour at his Gran’s, pouring over the pages with her to get the best idea of how to carry it out. She said magic this ancient didn’t have the same kind of need for symbolism that later rituals would require. That was medieval magic. This kind of magic, Dark Age kind of magic, just required enough grit to get there. 

At the very least, Ed knew he had more than enough of that to do the job. He went to the center of the kitchen for a moment, but thought the better of it. He liked the idea of having his back against something solid. He sat on the floor, his back against a cabinet next to the sink, and sat the book between his legs. 

He lifted his wand, but then faltered. “Are we sure it’s this simple? I feel like there should be candles or something.”

Molly Maeve let out a derisive snort. “Next, you’ll want a blood sacrifice and a group chant.”

“Andy said it was straightforward,” said James encouragingly. “She knows best.” 

Ed shot him a thankful look. 

“You’ve got this,” promised Victoire.

“You’re much more powerful than you give yourself credit for,” added James.

He looked to Molly Maeve, but she offered no more reassurance than a nod of her head. 

“Okay,” exhaled Ed. “ _Moirai!_ ”

* * *

MJ and the other Unspeakable started on opposite sides of the kitchen, muttering incantations every few feet until Teddy was sure his kitchen was the most securely warded area in all of Britain. 

“Ready?” called MJ from the other side, but her voice sounded muffled behind the wards. 

“Yeah,” called Teddy, and he watched as MJ pushed a wand-sized notch in her own ward to fire a spell directly at him. 

“ _Moirai!_ ”

* * *

Nothing happened at first. Ed just sat on his floor, holding his wand pathetically in front of him, while James, Victoire, and Molly Maeve held their breath from three corners of his kitchen. 

Then, a flicker. Unsteady at first, but ghostly the way Teddy had always been in his kitchen. Ed was staring at a pair of jeans he swore he owned somewhere, and at a set of legs he knew he _knew_ he recognized. He looked up at Victoire, and she was slack-jawed as her apparition came to life in front of her. 

“Hah! That’s me!” said the apparition, breathy with excitement. “Great haircut. I like that for us.”

Victoire touched her hair distantly, like she herself was not aware that her hair fell just above her collarbones. 

Teddy turned slowly, taking in the panorama. He elbowed ghost-Victoire. “Look, James has got long hair here.”

She peered past him to James, and smiled fondly. “Cute. You’ll add that to the letter, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said Teddy, laughing. He turned more. “Oh, Merlin— MJ!”

He was looking right at Molly Maeve like he’d seen a ghost.

“You’re here, too,” called apparition-Victoire. They both fell silent for a moment, and Ed figured MJ must have been calling back from another room. But suddenly, she crossed into the threshold too, stumbling like she’d had to climb through something to get there. 

Ed had seen MJ before, so it didn’t come as much of a shock to him, but Molly Maeve looked flabbergasted. 

“Merlin’s beard—“ she breathed. 

MJ froze. “She can see us. I can hear her— it worked.” She looked back over at her friends. “Teddy, I can’t believe it. It actually worked.”

Finally, Teddy spun all the way around, and Ed found himself staring right at him. He scrambled to his feet.

“Nice to finally meet you,” managed Ed, finding it harder to speak than he’d imagined. 

Teddy blinked owlishly for a few moments, but he caught up with himself eventually. He managed a smile. “An Auror, huh?”

* * *

For a while, they all sat and got acquainted with their alternate selves. Teddy watched, and it looked like Ed had the same idea. The MJs spoke, as did the Vics, and James watched all of them with a delighted awe that Teddy was sure was mirrored on his own face, too. 

MJ tried her best to relay to her alternate, Molly Maeve, everything they had learned, but it turned out she wasn’t an Unspeakable in this timeline. She was an Auror, and she was Ed’s partner on the job. In both timelines Vic was a Healer, but they worked different wards in each.

It wasn’t lost on Teddy that Ed’s Victoire never went by Vic. He wondered why that was, and why Ed’s MJ insisted on using both her names. But he could see Jay on this James, at least. He certainly didn’t look like the Jamie Teddy had grown up with. 

And Ed. There were no physical differences in the way Ed and Teddy looked. Everyone else had a change — a different haircut, a different aesthetic, _something_ — but they were both alike. Ed had admitted to Teddy that he owned the jeans Teddy was wearing, and Teddy was pretty sure that he got the sweatpants Ed was wearing for Christmas two years ago. 

But they _were_ different, Teddy reasoned. They had to be. Ed was an Auror; Ed was cleverer than Teddy by far. And seeing Ed and James — Jay — interact made Teddy wonder how different his life would be if his god-brother had decided to stay in England.

After a while, Vic stood. “We should go, MJ. Let the Edwards talk alone.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” agreed James. “Molly Maeve, Victoire?”

The other two stood, dusting themselves off. 

Teddy’s throat tightened. “Vic—“

She smiled, pushing his mop of blue hair off his face. “You don’t need me for this bit.”

She dropped her hand from Teddy’s head, and she walked out of the kitchen without another word. Teddy’s stomach clenched. He didn’t know where this anxiety was coming from— after all, he had felt strange when Ed was missing from his kitchen. His flat felt more complete with Ed in it, not less. So why was it so hard to face him now?

Jay pressed a kiss to Ed’s cheek, and darted out of the room after his cousins. And then it was just them, Teddy and Ed, in a silence that did not feel heavy at all. 

Ed was scoping him out with the keen eye of an Auror, and Teddy did not know what to say. 

“I named my toad after you.”

Ed lifted a brow. “Did you really?”

“Yeah. I bought him the first day you appeared in my kitchen. You were making food.”

Ed nodded. “You were asking Victoire — Vic, I guess — to finish a letter for you.”

Teddy didn’t remember. That was a fairly regular occurrence between them. Vic’s handwriting was just so much nicer than his. The silence lapsed again, and Teddy searched his brain for something to say. An alternate timeline could be a million different changes, and Ed was all of those possibilities personified. The reality was so overwhelming that Teddy didn’t even know where to start. 

Ed swallowed hard, and Teddy recognized the look in his face of gathering up the confidence to do something. 

“Who raised you?” asked Ed. “Was it… Mum and Dad?”

Teddy’s heart clenched violently. He hadn’t even thought of that— the idea that Ed could have been raised by their parents. What did that say about him? 

He shook his head. “No, Harry and Ginny did. My grandmother died when I was young.”

Ed went pale. “Gran’s dead in your timeline?”

Teddy froze for a second, dumbstruck, but nodded. His _grandmother_ — he called her Gran in Ed’s world, and she was _there_ _._

He’d been lucky to be raised by Harry and Ginny, he knew that, but here was a life where he had family. Just on the other side of the worn-thin tapestry of time. A close blood relative— not just odd afternoons with Draco and Narcissa where they spent time remembering someone Teddy couldn’t even visualize anymore. Something began to spread below his stomach, at his very core: a deep blue feeling he knew to be mourning. 

“Gran raised me,” explained Ed. “She’s a character, to say the least.”

“Would you… tell me about her?” 

And Ed did— Andromeda Tonks: brilliant witch, subpar cook, and novice Seer. He painted glorious scenes of his childhood for Teddy, and when he said them this way, they weren’t watercolor memories of a life Teddy had never lived. Teddy saw bold strokes in oil paint, a whole canvas of a world he was thrilled to know existed somewhere, even if it was not his own.

“She sounds brilliant. Would you… would you tell her that I love her? And I’m sorry I never got to know her?” It sounded silly coming from Teddy’s mouth. After all, this was not even _his_ grandmother, it was Ed’s Gran, and for all he knew, the Andromeda he would have known could have been entirely different. 

“Of course,” said Ed, and Teddy was reminded that of course he would understand. Ed _was_ Teddy— their minds worked the same.

And suddenly, that deep blue feeling shrank and hardened until it was nothing more than a pebble— one that Teddy could easily fit right into his pocket. 

“So,” continued Ed. “You’re with Victoire, you were raised by the Potters, and you don’t see Jay all that often?”

Teddy cleared his throat, swiping silly tears from his eyes. “He’s Jamie for me, but yeah. He lives in Egypt as a magi-archeologist. We get along great, but I haven’t seen him much since I moved out. He’s my brother, you know? And Vic and I have been inseparable since Hogwarts.”

“Victoire and I are allegedly best friends, but she’s too buried in her work at St. Mungo’s to come visit me anymore,” laughed Ed. 

Teddy smiled, shaking his head. “Consistent across timelines, at least. How did you and James come to be a couple? The whole idea — so strange coming from my timeline — but I saw you two together once or twice. You make sense. The whole god-brother, age gap thing must have been a bit troubling at the start, though.”

Ed shrugged. “The god-brother thing— not so much. I wasn’t raised by Harry and Ginny, and I never dated Victoire, so I don’t have such a deep connection to their family as you seem to.”

Teddy must have looked horrified because Ed continued quickly. 

“Not like that! I’m still invited to Burrow Sunday meals and Christmas Eve. Molly Maeve is my partner in the Auror office. She’s one of my best friends. And Harry and Ginny always brought me on all their family vacations and all that. But Gran and I are our own family unit, and the Potters and Weasleys are just family friends.”

“Oh,” said Teddy. “That’s… nice?”

He liked it that James, Albus, and Lily were his siblings. His god-siblings, really, but that was a technicality that only mattered on legal documents. In everyone’s minds and in his own heart, they were his blood, too. He ached for the idea of Andromeda, but he wasn’t sure he would trade them for her if he had the chance.

* * *

“It is,” Ed promised, nodding to Teddy. “I’m sure it was nice to have siblings and all, but Jay is _definitely_ not my brother.”

Teddy smiled like he was in on a secret. “No, he’s definitely not.”

Ed froze. “You didn’t… see anything, did you?”

“No! God no! I’d have to bleach my poor eyes if that was true. But… I was there the morning he gave you the ring. That was sweet.”

Ed felt heat creep into his cheeks, and he couldn’t tell how he felt about the idea that Teddy had seen such a vulnerable moment of his. 

He shifted in his chair. “I’ve caught my fair share of Teddy/Vic snogs. Absolutely vile.”

Teddy turned darker than Ed thought possible. “I was really hoping that wasn’t the case.” He shook his head, mostly to himself, and then continued. “It struck me as odd, later on, because Vic and I have been together… God, I don’t know how many years. Since we were teenagers. But we’re not engaged, and we don’t have any plans to get married. I just thought it was nice that you two wanted that. I get to know now, for sure, that I had a lovely wedding in another life.”

Ed laughed. “Are you kidding? Gran has been telling me to make an honest man out of Jay from the moment we started dating!”

Teddy’s life sounded fine— pleasant even. It was clear he was head-over-heels for Vic. Ed was happy for him on that front. And Ed always liked the idea of being closer to Harry and Ginny, so it was interesting to hear about a world where they had been his guardians. But Ed meant what he said to James the night before. He didn’t want anyone else’s life. He knew that from the start, and this conversation was only confirming it. A world without Gran? Without Jay? It was a hard pass.

Teddy smiled sadly. “I wish there was a way we could keep in touch.”

“The way your MJ made it sound, the universe would get turned to ribbons if we did that.”

Teddy frowned. “That’s alarming.”

Ed nodded. “Deeply.”

Teddy pursed his lips. “I… I feel weird ending this conversation, knowing that MJ will close the rift, and I’ll never see you again.”

Ed couldn’t say he felt all that sentimental about it, but the look on Teddy’s face — his own face, reflected back at him — gave his chest a brief, bittersweet spasm.

“Well, there’s certainly no forgetting an experience like this,” said Ed at last.

He was hoping Teddy would understand what he was trying to get at here. That forgetting was half the battle, and that if they remembered this, they could see each other again in their memories. But Teddy nodded solemnly, and Ed was relieved it didn't take an entire pot of tea and three biscuits for Teddy to understand the ideas hidden in the spaces between Ed’s words.

Teddy clambered to his feet. “When I cross the threshold, MJ and the other Unspeakable will start the process.”

Ed stood up to join him. “Sounds good.”

* * *

Teddy walked out of the kitchen backwards, trying to fix the details of this moment into his memory. Mid-day, a cloudy London sky. His dishes piled up in the sink. The distant hoot of owls from beyond his open window. And when he took a last look at Ed, he didn’t see his own self in Ed at all any more. It was like finding that one difference in a set of identical twins: the one that unlocked every discrepancy your eyes had glossed over before.

Identical as they were, Teddy looked at Ed and he saw a different person entirely. He took the final step out of the threshold, and Ed vanished. 

Vic found him at once, and the feeling of her hand on his arm was enough to pull his attention completely from his kitchen. She was blue eyes and that clean linen smell, and Teddy felt lighter than he had in a long time. 

* * *

“This has been a long time coming,” said James, holding his paintbrush gleefully. 

Ed smiled when he shook his head. “I can’t believe you picked blue.”

“Of course I did! Puddlemere blue!”

His paintbrush was loaded up with deep blue. Deep enough that Ed was objectively concerned about how dark it would make his kitchen look. The wood was on the darker side too, although not nearly as dark as cherry. His countertops and trim were white, though, and maybe that would be a nice contrast.

Ed nodded his head knowingly. “Of course. Lest either of us forget that you are, in fact, the best Chaser Puddlemere has seen in decades.”

James grinned. “I wouldn’t go _that_ far.”

“I would,” said Ed, and James rewarded him with a sloppy kiss on the cheek. 

He had let James pick all the new wall colors when he moved in. Deep blue for the kitchen, beige for the living room (even though it was an open plan, and Ed did not understand the point of distinguishing them with paint), orange for the bathroom, dusty purple for Ed’s office, and soft pink for their bedroom. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, and Ed was quite sure that it would look like a disaster when it was all done, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

The kitchen was the last room to go. He wasn’t sure if James had saved it for last on purpose, but they’d waited to paint it until all of James’s things had made their way into Ed’s flat. It had been a slow process with James being forced to linger in his own apartment for months until his lease was up, and until Ed could renegotiate his own with his landlord.

Ed’s walls had been bare before James started moving in, but now they were covered in signed Quidditch posters and pictures from their holidays that Ed didn’t even remember James taking. 

It felt more and more like home the less he shared it with Teddy, and the more he shared it with James. The only mysterious figure in his kitchen was James when he opened the fridge at midnight because he just couldn’t help himself. 

“You go first,” he beamed. “The first coat of paint on our new life.”

Ed rolled his eyes, but he humored his boyfriend — _fiancé_ , he corrected himself — and rolled the first bold stroke of navy onto the wall. 

“It’s a great color.”

And Ed, knowing perfectly well that this flat was a disaster rooted in James’s inability to pick anything other than the ‘happiest-feeling’ color, couldn’t help but agree. 

* * *

Lupin Cottage had been abandoned for well over twenty years, and the grass was starting to take over. Vic parked the car she had borrowed from her father in the driveway, which was little more than a dirt path, and pushed open the door. 

Teddy was no pureblood. In fact, he was about as much of a mutt as you could be, unless you were Vic. He was some amalgamation of halfblood and werewolf-spawn and Metamorphagus, and he was not the kind of wizard you expected to have an ancestral home. Blacks had ancestral homes. _Malfoys_ had ancestral homes. 

But this cottage… This was his. Not in the way the Sacred 28 had, obviously. The cottage looked like it had scarcely more than two bedrooms, and the property it lay on wasn’t modest, but it paled in comparison to the rolling acres of Malfoy Manor. 

His grandparents had lived here, though. His father grew up here… transformed here. Teddy wondered if there was a cage hidden in a secret basement, and if it was possible to burn it if there was. 

He climbed out of the car after Vic, bumping the door closed with his hip. She had the key in her hands, taken right out of his father’s old Gringott’s vault, and Teddy liked the way she looked standing there. It was all green with the start of spring, and Vic bloomed against the backdrop of the cottage. 

“Ready?” she asked, trying to gauge the expression on his face.

He nodded. The air was thin and light when he took a gulp of it. 

“Ready.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there it is! the kitchen dimension! this was such a fun thing to write, and i absolutely loved figuring out who was in each boy's life and why.


End file.
